Bringing people to Paintball, a common sense approach......

I live in the SF Bay area, and have 8 fields within an hour of me. Yet I drive to the farthest one because it and its regular does pretty much everything you guys are posting about, (hell I even ref as a volunteer there). If anyone is caught being "that guy" he's pretty quickly shunned and will quickly either change his attitude or not return. (this is usually done respectfully, we don't fight fire with fire there)

Some of the other things we do is we let the rentals take the rental masks home. This means they're not using someone else's sweat covered mask, it's thiers. We like to think that when it goes home, it tends to sit on their shelf where they see it all the time and think "Man paintball was fun, i should go again".

Lastly the thing my team does is we get used gear in 9/10 condition or better for cheap or donated and we hold a raffle every 3-4 months. These raffles are ONLY for underequipped new players and rentals. We tend to give out multiple gearbags worth of goods, and send 2-3 players home with entire set ups, and the others get jerseys, headbands, pants, etc. So far it's worked out great and the winners tend to become regulars out there.

We haven't even started talking about networking (actually finding new players) let alone how to raise them. lol. I am currently trying to start a state wide paintball club in Kansas. Working on trying to contact everyone I can find that has played in the past or would like to try. I think the most important part is making the game available. My group hosts events once a month in 2 separate parts of the state. The number one reason in the past I have had people not commit is because they don't think they will ever use their expensive gear.

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Men are never beaten by anything but their own souls. . .(George Patton)

And the guys that are screaming for people to just "move up" to new players... They are being jerks. Each person will be READY to move up when THEY face their fear. Those guys yelling at them to do something they aren't ready for is, exactly what shouldn't happen when playing for the first time.

If that guy wants to move up so bad, then he should DO IT himself. It is just a game, and some people play more aggressively than others. That doesn't mean the others aren't valuable or doing their part... Sometimes the person at the back SAVES the game for you when some aggressive player on the other team gets past all the front guys and gets stopped by the newbie in the back.

Whether or not you know it, if you tell a N00b to "move up" and you aren't moving up, 9/10 times what they hear is "go get shot while I stay back here where it's safe."
If you want to encourage a n00b to move up field, ask them to cover you while you move and then to take your position.

+1...
and what I think is even more important is that they use a decent mask the first time they play. I knew a guy who had a bunch of loaner gear and he would bring new people to play(outlaw), and would pretty much guarantee they would never come back by loaning them ****ty masks that fogged up within 5 minutes of play. It was like, "hey, do you want to come out to the woods and let me shoot the crap out of you with my awesome gear while you're blinded?"

I wonder if capture the flag, or any other game where the ultimate objective is something other than eliminating your opponent, might be less intimidating to new players because you're more focused on that goal, rather than just "omg I have to battle this guy or that guy".

If I bring a couple of newbies in, I try to give them the option of wearing my mask or shooting my marker. I also ask, "Do you want to vs me 1 on 1 to warm up, be on the same team, or do you want to know some ideas and tricks that put you above most rookie tournament players? If we 1 vs 1 we will review what you and I did wrong, walk the field, and see how we can do better next time." One dude chose to learn everything before we even played our first game. The second game he ever played, he took out 4 people, bunkering two. The refs put us 3 vs 11. We lost. I think we would of won had I not been shot out early.

The key to making a newbie comfortable is to review every game to see what went wrong, correct bad techniques, and learn game changing moves that will destroy the other team.